About Elizabeth Courtenay

Primary Sources

1424. 5 Kal. Jan. SS. Apostoli, Rome. (f. 155d.) To Philip Courtenay, donsel, and Elizabeth Hungereford, damsel, of the diocese of Bath and Wells. Confirmation of the dispensation granted to them by Henry, bishop of Winchester (to whom the pope lately granted, inter alia, faculty to dispense thirty persons of both sexes in the realm or other dominions of the king of England, to marry persons related to them in the third or more remote degree of kindred), to marry, notwithstanding that they were related in the third and fourth degree of kindred, in virtue of which dispensation they have been married. Sincere deuocionis affectus.

Born about 1403, Elizabeth was likely the eldest child of Sir Walter Hungerford, later Baron Hungerford,[1] and his first wife Katherine (Catherine) Peverell. She was daughter and coheir of Thomas PEVERELL, MP, of Parke and Hamatethy in Cornwall, by Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas COURTENAY. [2]

She married Sir Philip Courtenay, (1404–1463) of Powderham, Devon. On her marriage she took to her husband as her marriage portion the manor of Molland in North Devon, which was then inherited by her second son Sir Philip I Courtenay of Molland (who died in 1488), who founded a junior branch of the Courtenay family. A fragment of an ancient chest tomb in Molland Church displays two interlaced Hungerford sickles (the ancient symbol of the Hungerford family) and a dolphin of Courtenay of Powderham. Her third son was Peter Courtenay (c.1432-1492) Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of Winchester, whose splendid surviving mantlepiece in the Bishop's Palace, Exeter displays much heraldry including Hungerford sickles and Peverell garbs.[3]